


At Close of Day

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Bourne (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-02
Updated: 2007-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:38:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1629503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reflections on The Professor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Close of Day

**Author's Note:**

> Written for thedeadparrot

 

 

He wasn't sure how it had become his duty. Every time the message was transmitted, he took up his weapons and his fake passports and his blood money, and left behind the quiet world of teaching.

He wasn't sure why he originally wanted to do it. One night, so long ago, when he was too young to look beyond the romance of a stereotype, he stepped out on a path that led him to a world of secret identities and false smiles and a wealth of weapons that normal people never knew existed, much less how to use.

He knew that it was strange that a gun felt easier in his hand than did a pencil. He knew that being able to fieldstrip any type of gun presented to him was not normal. He knew that his intimate knowledge of every one of his limitations, in every context that could possibly come up, set him apart from society. He knew that every moment he spent working for a secret project in a secretive organization was a moment he spent walking further away from what constituted a real life to most people.

He was good at what he did. The elite of the elite, a man called upon to succeed at jobs that most people would consider impossible at best and suicide at worst. The ease with which he did his hidden job always bothered him when he sat down at a piano to teach children, though he would never admit as much, even to himself.

He became The Professor, in thought and word and deed. His real name was nearly lost to him, in the sea of invented identities and false homes and counterfeit allegiances he acted out. At no time could he tolerate a failure in his duty; at no time could he set aside the burden that he carried for his country. Sometimes, he wasn't sure which country, or whom his duty left him beholden to, but at the end of the day, governments all looked alike to him. He had spent too much time bringing them down or raising them up for them to be unique.

The headaches made everything worse. With the pain radiating in his mind, it was more difficult to focus, either on his gun or on his cover story. The pills only helped for a little while, and then the ache would return tenfold. When it was the worst, he would find himself flexing his trigger finger while a child mangled Beethoven, or find his foot tapping in time to Chopin when he should have been watching a target. It was a leash around his neck, a constant reminder that he was set apart from everyone around him, and that he could not change.

The job became all he knew, and his cover became all he could afford to allow himself. He refused to be anything suggested by his superiors, as their ideas always involved offices. Teaching piano at least allowed him the ability to choose his own schedule, and minimized the chances of his real job ruining the few relationships, however tenuous, that he permitted himself to make.

He knew how people saw him. Cold, contained, silent; he was a killer, and while that did not bother him anymore, his frown would deepen whenever a mother flinched away from him, or a passerby on the street would give him a wider berth. Danger was too much a part of his life for him to move as though he were harmless, and the training that he subjected himself to constantly left him with a grace that spoke only of violence. After so many years, it became easier to hide the jumbled mass of sadness, exasperation, frustration, and melancholy that roiled under the surface of his somber expression; a reaction that he could not afford to sanction in himself.

His phone would beep, and the message would appear, and he would take up the tools of his trade. He would step away from pianos and classics and the faint proud smiles of parents watching their children tiptoe towards understanding. He would walk forward towards the possibility of his death.

It wasn't that he went into the mission expecting to die. He never went into a mission expecting to die. The possibility was there, the reality was there, but he preferred to ignore it, subsume the niggling worries in preparation and training and the comforting routine of loading ammunition into a gun.

His profession did not allow him to nurse doubts or fall into fear. He did not pray to any gods, or worship at any altars. Life was transient; either he would survive, or he wouldn't. It didn't truly matter either way, as there was no one to stand over his grave and mourn. Solitude was part of the job as well, and there was no room to grieve over the loss of human companionship.

So it was a surprise when he was laying on the ground dying, and found that his thoughts were turning to all of the things that he did not believe were important, could not believe were important. Not and do his job properly. But in those last few minutes, when he realized just how free his target had become, he also realized just how caged he had made himself, with his weapons and his fake lives and the blood money that funded it all.

Regret tasted like copper pennies in the back of his throat, the weighty tang of metal and salt choking him until he almost couldn't speak. But he said the words that were important to him, gave the understanding that his target should have had already to him, and was able to close his eyes and lay his duty down without losing himself in the role that had become who he was.

And if there was no one to stand over his grave and mourn, at least the man who killed him would always remember him, if only as another nameless fallen soldier.

 


End file.
